A powerful skill that empowers one to evoke emotions and drive outcomes. Here are two aspects of why storytelling matters. — 1. Telling a Story to the users It was only towards the end of my engineering degree that I started pondering about the other end of the code that we write, i.e. what connection do we have with someone whom we haven’t met, and might not ever meet. What emotions do we evoke with our expression (the…

Over last few years I have built user research capabilities at Kriyate, 1mg, and Hike. This post is based on these experiences. — You know nothing Jon snow. — Ygritte or Unless you’re Superman or a radiologist, you won’t see the skeletons when looking at a horse or a chicken, but those skeletons nevertheless make these animals very different creatures. Don’t try to ride the chicken, because the skeleton won’t support you. …

At Hike, user centricity is one of our core focus areas. We obsess to not only deliver functionality and quality that users need but do that while using delightful metaphors that they can relate to in their local context. “All answers lie outside the building” When it comes to implementation…

Sometime ago, I wrote a post on how to hire a UX designer. It received positive response, but I missed a point there, an important one: Test every UX candidate with at least one assignment. Make it a rule! Its the easiest way to identify actual practitioners from rehearsed candidates. …

I am a fan of wireframes. I think there’s no better method to judge a flow. As a UXer, we need to deliver an optimised flow that satisfies functionality first, then add visual designs that can communicate those flows effectively. But if the flow doesn’t work, nothing works. Hence, wireframes. One of my mentors taught me a simple and effective rule: Wireframes means wireframes. No color! I have come across number of shortcuts from designers to workaround this effort: from using symbols from visual library to create “realistic” wireframes, to scanning paper wireframes, to putting a grayscale layer over visual mocks in Sketch. But this one wins the cake:

The famous Objective and Key Results (OKR) goal framework adopted by the likes of Google, Uber and others landed on to Hike this quarter. OKRs help align the company towards common strategic initiatives (which are typically decided at the start of a quarter). These are structured hierarchically, broken down into…

Mapping is one of the most essential and indispensable exercise to define and detail a relevant and valuable offering. As a designer, I have always been averse to the idea of ‘Design Hackathon’ primarily because it trivialises the process of mapping in particular, and Design Thinking in general. …